I think he means the battery plate. Yes, you should be able to use another battery plate if you find one that conforms with the voltage requirements etc.

The new monitor is here. It's a real upgrade on the previous monitor. The housing feels much more solid, it doesn't creak like the plastic one did. I feel like if I dropped this it might be able to survive a fall.

Overscan and stretch are totally fixed, the view is exactly what you see on the GH2 LCD in fact I don't think you can set it to be 16:10, it defaults to correctly displaying 16:9. I haven't played with it fully, but it looks like the button toggles between 4:3 and 16:9.

It has an earphone port but unfortunately on the monitor I have received it so recessed into the housing that the cable doesn't make proper contact and the audio only comes out the left channel. If I push it and hold it with my hand I can get it to come out of both, but as soon as it's released the right channel cuts out. I always record audio separately and sync later on so I probably won't use the earphone socket anyway. So I'll probably not return it.

The battery attachment is completely different. It looks like the battery sits in a 3rd party shoe, which the makers of the monitor have accommodated with the holes on the back of the monitor. It's not as slick a solution as the original monitor, but it might have an advantage in that it does not make electrical connection with the monitor, instead connecting with a small wire to a DC input, so you could not bother with the shoe and go direct from a v-mount to the DC input. On mine when the socket is fully screwed in the socket does not sit straight, I think I can live with that. It's not loose, it's just not vertical.

It has 6 saveable user modes, I think I will set one and just leave it at that.

There are a lot more options for the "FUN" button. Great name...

Exposure - Makes over exposed areas red
Focus - No point setting the "FUN" button to this as there is a dedicated focus button
Black White - Enough said
Guide - Toggles between 4:3 guides and 16:9 safe areas I think
BlueGun - Makes it blue...
PicMode - Goes through the user modes 1 - 6.
Freeze - Most useful setting for me. Freezes the view and keeps it on screen until the button is pressed a second time.
Corner - Does a split screen kind of thing, toggles between split vertical, split horizontal and 4 corner split (Don't see myself using this)
Scale Mode - A zoomed mode (I assume for getting even more critical focus)
Display Mode - Seems to just flash up what the input is at the top right (HDMI 1080i 60hz)
Micro Color - Weird colour mode, like inverted colours or something (no idea what this is for)

It looks like there is more control over colour on this screen, so you should be able to get closer to matching the LCD on the camera for colour. I've not tried to do this yet.

The OsdDuration sets the time before the menu will disappear. If you set this to 4 it will never disappear. The 4:3/16:9 button also acts as the exit button for the menu.

The 3 screws to attach the sun screen are a very nice improvement, although on mine the holes were slightly out of alignment with the housing so the material had to be stretched to fit over the hole, not a big deal.

I have 1 stuck red pixel on my screen, not going to break out the tissues and cry about this one, you have to really look for it and it's probably within tolerances.

The focus peaking is as it was on the previous model. The biggie for me was stretch and overscan, these are 100% fixed, the extra FUN options are a nice bonus.

Freeze is an awesome bonus, I will be doing skeleton crew budget stuff where the crew are also the cast, so it's great to get the shot together, hit the freeze button and let everyone see a quick preview before the shot goes ahead. Especially useful when I get my BMC as there will be no need to record a quick clip, that cannot be deleted in camera (in current firmware) and would waste space.

Any questions fire away.

Andrew

@CFreak - thats not all the colour options. I will take another photo tomorrow. Yes there is individual rgb.

@arknox, i just received mine. Tell me, does your blacks are blue?

@slacklaporte - I will see if I can match the GH2 lcd colour this weekend. Will also take more pictures. How is your headphone port?

@arknox I usually mount from the top of my current monitor. Are the screw holes on the top 1/4 in?

I also tried to match colour a few days ago. No luck on that I'm afraid. As @slackaporte says. The shadows seem to go a blue tinge. It's like they baked in a Michael Bay colour where the highs are warm and the shadows are cool, and you can't get around it, no matter what you do.

Not a deal breaker for me, but may be for some. Colour is definitely not accurate to the GH2 monitor, and always seems to be contrastier or show less DR than the LCD. For composition and focus though, it's perfect.

Just as an added bit of info. There is no hole in the hood to accommodate the headphone jack, so unless you fancy creating one you're not going to be able to use the headphone jack with the hood on. I'm not using the jack since it's messed up on my particular monitor, and I won't need it anyway.

I bought 3rd party Sony F770 batteries for this, 2 of them. Price was only £15 each. One of these runs this monitor for 5 hours solid! Can't ask for better than that. Have no idea how much battery life you save by turning to standby between shots, but with 5 hours on the clock for each battery I'm not bothered about running that test.

Thanks for the pic arknox. I'm about 95% sold on this thing, but the Seetec looks nice as well.

I imagine adding a small metal grommet would do the trick as far as the headphone is concerned.

I think to fix the issue with my monitor I'd have to take the housing off and drill a bigger hole where the headphone port is as the it's too recessed into the monitor. I've already looked inside it but it's essentially 2 halves that are connected with a little plastic connector (don't know the technical term), it doesn't come apart too easily. So screw it, it doesn't bother me that much. Audio acquisition is always a separate thing for me with a sync job in post, so it's never going to be needed.

Last question @arknox and @sherwood. Is the power supply that comes with it made for U.S. electrical outlets? Excited about this thing!

@slacklaporte

I think it is valid point.

It is best to make shot video to show accuracy of gray along all brightness range.

I'll make shure that factory wiull review it and try to fix as much as possible.

@vicharris Exact! I had some shoots recently and didnt even use the new H056 because of its colors shift. Make up artist, clients always check in monitors, i calibrated the liliput and its similar to my lcd cam. I know they can use it. Grey must be grey, thats it. @Vitaliy_Kiselev I wrote them 6 days ago about this problem and got no news.